the Universal Declaration of Human Rights supports the right of peoples under the struggle for freedom from oppression that crushes them. In that moment of clarity, all nations have signed these noble ideas, the same as on earth would then ignore, because certainly the people continued to be subject and they are never acknowledged any right to fight for his release.
Balvanera lecturing, emphasized varies the volume, was silent, watching the audience, run the scale of prose and ended up, well above usual. And the room exploded and a standing ovation, almost angrily. On stage, the panelists and organizers agglutinated around to congratulate her figure with eloquent gestures and broad smiles and effusive gestures and honeyed words. Dr. Roberto
Balvanera intellectual left was a well-known in the local area and a landmark of Buenos Aires culture in human rights. For some years he occupied the chair of the same name of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. His younger years had been tumultuous. First was a Marxist, socialist and now after declaring unrelated to any current. Daba
intense talks on the egalitarian ideal, wrote articles that were published in the newsletters of the left vernacular and had written several short essays shelled out where his ideas, scattered between the narration of the facts of recent history.
Balvanera encouraged all forms of struggle for the right to life and equality and the liberation of the oppressed, excluded and marginalized in the world. I used to magnify the selfishness and brutality of the powerful and ignore the selfishness and brutality of the oppressed, not realizing that in his idyllic world, the latter would take the place of the former.
drove to his house with the reverberation of applause filled the cabin and the memory of the stridency of the hounding him without defined shapes microphone.
got out and locked the gate to the garage. Rose to greet his son. The found in her room with her inseparable friend, Matthias, head to head, wasting life from the PC monitor, as every night.
Ernesto Fidel had just turned seventeen and since the death of his mother had been left to their fate. Her father paid little attention, as if the deceased was still there, relieved of all responsibility. He eventually crossed over dinner, a ceremony languid monosyllables and fast food. Ernesto hated all that speech and showed no interest in politics. Along with the contempt the ideology of his father, grew an anger that became visible in aggression Standing up to him. Away from the left and right, Ernesto secretly grow marijuana in the back of his house and sold it at school with a sigil almost absent. However, until death Balvanera insist on turning to the cause and keep it out of the "brotherhood of the useful idiots," as he called almost all poor guy who did not share his ideology.
Ernesto and Matthias were overlooked, not only at home but also in room. Wall by Its rooms were side by side. During the night provided a dividing concert shots that seemed to communicate with an indecipherable code jokingly or perhaps nonexistent. Although detested Balvanera hammering, using the same technique to call Ernesto when their visits to neighboring spent all reasonable times.
"When dinner is the wall you hit me I answer and I had said the boy the first time. But the communication system had been effective only during the first two weeks. Since then it was common to see wall to Balvanera skinned hammering fists in anger growing and shrinking result.
Following the marginalized of the world and his son Ernesto, ranking third podium place in their labors, were cockroaches.
What Balvanera felt by cockroaches was a mixture of disgust, hatred and fear for there is no known adjective. He spent his life fighting, and his phobia had rammed against the scourge of almost all media, covering the gondola insecticide sprays, baits, gels, massive disinfection minute treatments. But in some mysterious way, the animal he managed to reappear each spring with little ones running around on the kitchen counter, and to make matters worse, each baked and fearless seemed faster than before. Tonight
Balvanera had decided not to dine. Prepared a good strong coffee and started taking notes on the kitchen table.
After several minutes of meditation and peace was writing his troubled with great shock, the look he fell, he bristled all hairs of the body and heart stopped. From underneath the refrigerator started out about thirty or forty different sized cockroaches marching in rows of five, lined up as a valet and following the step as a soldier on the day of the motherland. In front of the marching formation and antenudo largest specimen, leading his army straight Balvanera in uniform linear motion. The company stopped just inches from his left foot, to complicate matters that lay outside, barely protected by a hojota totally inadequate.
For a few eternal seconds, stood firm Balvanera cockroach in front. Then the leader turned 90 degrees all the training accurate and disappeared under the kitchen.
When he could, Balvanera stood up, hesitated, out of the kitchen, turned on the lights he found, went to his bedroom, put on his socks and a pair of sneakers tightly closed and went away with little steps a foot for to look at the floor while the walls and ceiling. Along the way he armed himself with a broom and a stealth worn end went to the kitchen. There, on his notepad still roam one of the monstrous insects, paused and then continued touring the paper. Obviously some gland secreted under her abdomen a black substance that was drawing lines as he walked. He stopped suddenly and went to the race disappearing behind the refrigerator. Balvanera notepad picked as one who receives a letter from the devil and saw the large letters and trembling block letters written in ink cockroach abdomen which could definitely read: "We want to negotiate."
The exact sequence of thoughts that the episode was shot in the Balvanera mind during the following days, from the suspicion of madness itself to the admission of a possible intelligent strain, either by a recent migration or a Darwinian evolution operated in the backgrounds of your kitchen had been installed in your home to complicate life.
poured the next day in passing comment on his problems with cockroaches in the staff room of the Law School take great care not to mention that their own well being paraded and wrote over the belly. The issue sparked a barrage of condescension and the story of many stories that, among all, outlining the unsuccessful struggle of man against household cockroach. However, commiserations always had a hint of indifference.
"Yes," said one, "at home are a problem endless. "Che, no one saw the Book of Themes? Fortunately
Nelida, a teacher relatively new, relatively young and relatively beautiful Balvanera provided a relatively useful information on the problem.
few months ago it had become accustomed to sharing a cup of coffee during the interval. Balvanera had some interest in the lady but never dared to go beyond the labor talks. Nelida professed an admiration for him frank and open, but neither would advance an inch into the land of the heart.
"This is the address and phone," she said handing him a note. Take care all kinds of pests: rats, roaches, fleas, pigeons, whatever, and apparently are quite good in his own.
In a gesture almost pornographic, Balvanera grabbed the paper and fingers Nelida.
"Thanks," he said. When sanitizing the house you must come to an afternoon tea.
She blushed and thanked the honors. Two days
staff inspected the house of pests Balvanera kitchen. In an outpouring of cucarachología general, the exterminator explained the behavior of the creature, from its gestation in the primitive egg to reproductive maturity, showing why it would be necessary to do this and that and never another and mentioning in passing the most common errors resulting competition in general, his desire to save "product" to lower costs in unfair competition; game that they would not enter ever given the tradition of the company to maintain high quality standards and efficiency, even if it meant supporting a price differential.
Specifically, Balvanera was empty all the kitchen until the last fret. Then they would come with his team and would effect the disinfection, the secret was to burn poison pills (allowed and approved by the relevant agency) and saturate the room with smoke for 24 hours. Finally return to disinfect and sanitize everything.
The operation was within a few days and seven days there were no reports of vermin.
the evening of the eighth day, Balvanera opened the door and greeted with a smile Nelida. The woman handed him a package of thin masses and set out to tea. And they drank and ate and talked. Balvanera
talked about his problems with Ernesto, the mother was missing much of the constraints that the absence of the female figure required the boy's education, and the widower's life accordingly. She raised the stakes commenting on the inconvenience of a man as he was alone and asking whether he had considered the possibility of forming a new partner. He replied that it was very difficult to find a suitable woman, a woman who meet such and such attributes, and then mention all the virtues that had already recognized in previous talks. And so the talk continued, gaining in intensity and moving toward a fixed point in the minds of both fellow members. Until the conversation was abruptly interrupted by a cockroach, perhaps by train to celebrate their survival to the Holocaust, went for a walk on the white wall of the dining room.
"But Is it possible? "Protested the man and jumped up to find a broom, brush or perhaps best shotgun.
When he returned to the dining room terrified Nélida found against the front door with one hand on the doorknob as a real invasion of cockroaches climbed up the table legs, attacking the masses and was in and out of the cups with chilling bustle. Without even greeting, Nelida opened the door and made off with great dread. Then, as guided by an inaudible command, all cockroaches ceased their activity, fell to the floor and marched in single file right next to the wall, crossed the aisle to tail antennas, and sank into the darkness of the kitchen, leaving Balvanera paralyzed in the middle of the room with the broom in one hand and a thousand miles Nelida the other.
man slumped in his chair, rested his elbows on his thighs and held his head in his hands gently pulling a thin hair that still grew at the height of the parietal. He stared at the floor as if searching for an answer in the design of the tiles.
was clear that the whole play had been carefully plotted and executed by the colony millimeter with the deliberate purpose of displaying his power. Balvanera now knew that if these creatures are so wished, his life in that house would be a nightmare. Quickly thought of selling the property but then imagined the horror of what box mildly interested buyer landed in his home and saw a very plump walking the floors, walls and ceilings. He returned to his mind that terrible phrase: "We want to negotiate" and gradually began to realize that if there was no way to kill these bugs, to kill and die, as God commands, all other options would be closed.
But he would agree, human by father and mother, man fully trained and completed university studies to discuss the use of living space of your property with a marauding colony of cockroaches, bugs, for details, residents darkness and friends of dirt, grease and manure? What entity attributed these critters to come to him with such claims? And Business? Negotiate what? Negotiate your home, your food ration? Should I leave the leftovers for dinner on a newspaper at the bottom of the fridge and a little water puddle on the side so that the unfortunate eat and drink and copulate and reproduce in a wild frenzy, prodigal in eggs, seeds of new hordes husky swelling the ranks of the enemy, generation after generation with the speed of passing of the summers? What damn thing he would negotiate with the beasts of the underworld, with these horrible monsters that Providence had the happy knack of miniaturization to preserve us from attending the sad details of his anatomy disgusting? No!. He had nothing to negotiate with cockroaches. I could not conceive any point of contact between the interests of the parties. Its existence only deserved the extermination or at least the immediate and unconditional expulsion beyond the borders of the home. Already
spare the ego with these thoughts restorers, entered the kitchen with sweeping decision, but only to stop abruptly in front of the table on which rested now a whole pile of pages written with that shaky.
rose leaves dejectedly. The ordered easily because, intelligent, the animal had numbered folios, above right. He leaned against the door frame and read:
"Our limited intelligence is not enough to understand the visceral hatred for our species. We're just different from you, but as alive and worthy of continuing in this state as anyone else. We fight for our right to live and we must oppose with strength and decision to his desire, incomprehensible to us, to exterminate without seeming justified cause. All we want is to live in our homeland, which happens to be the kitchen of his home, Balvanera. And if you want is not a whim but because our ancestors lived here and the parents of our parents and our ancestors far comes memory. "
" Obviously, we can not beat it, but you see that you can not against us so we propose a deal: You let us live in the backgrounds of your kitchen and we will do our best to not be seen neither as even once. For you will be as if we no longer existed and rid us of the massacres that tip we each attempted extermination. "
Balvanera The letter again left lying on the couch, her head buried in his hands.
was strange because while all logic suggested that the absence of the pest did not differ for all practical purposes the absence of evidence of the pest, a feeling of insecurity Balvanera invaded when assessing the situation to cook a fried egg with the cockroaches swarming about two feet from the pan, twisting in unimaginable overcrowding between the floor of the oven and the kitchen. But what will differentiate this, for example, a community of a thousand tarantulas living in the casings of the blind of which had no evidence of existence?. The painting was then more serious: It was not possible sighting which generated insecurity, but the mere knowledge of the existence of the plague, even invisible. And if you know it's harder to ignore, forget what is known even more difficult.
After a thorough analysis was Balvanera to the conclusion that everything except for his psychosis indicated that treatment should be closed.
still hesitant, wrote in a paper "Deal" and without stop being so ridiculous, so slipped below the counter.
Balvanera For a time he never saw cockroaches. Meanwhile, life was happening. His first encounters with Nelida days after the episode were lukewarm and distant. She felt guilty of an irrational rudeness had revealed to him matched to the most stupid of women, and he was a dirty man who lived in a sty full of vermin had generated much of the Almighty the face of the Earth.
Ernesto, meanwhile, had been expelled from school for trafficking marijuana. In a gesture to the figure of the father, the Director did not report to the police. But equally Balvanera banished him to the house of his sister Ophelia in Cordoba for a time to cut all relations in Buenos Aires. Ofelia
Two months after returning to Ernesto and a long list of recommendations for his brother.
"The boy needs a father Robert, a father dealing, nothing more. It has a prodigious intelligence but missed. Everything he does, which is often bad, it is to get your attention do not you see? Attack you and so look at all these ideas contrariarte yours. Back a bit of Roberto seventies, and take care of the boy but will end badly. Balvanera
listened and nodded without listening without assent. He was convinced that the boy's behavior was the result of age and that would be corrected when mature. Then understand the world and warn the way a few digits the lives of many and the death of a few more.
But everything remained the same. The boy returned at noon and that night was already installed in the room of Matthew, which was recently cited a large fauna increasingly apathetic teenagers, attracted God knows why Honeys Internet.
Balvanera dined alone, looked a little television and went through the kitchen to get something to drink. Then we noted that the summer had made his own and two or three tiny as ants scurrying cockroaches innocent marble countertop.
Given the evidence of flagrant violation of the terms agreed in writing Balvanera protested and found the answer the next day.
"We Balvanera, are creatures!. You know how guys are, do mischief until they learn the rules. Do you even give us time to educate them a little? If you are a beautiful creatures. "
" We do not understand the reason for this hatred so visceral that reaches even children cockroach. We do not understand Balvanera. Going through life with his speech against discrimination and in favor of the oppressed of the world and we have condemned us to choose between imprisonment or extermination, so as not to pollute your vision with our presence. Understand them well Balvanera: for us, you are Hitler against the Jews. "
This message struck a chord in Balvanera itself. Until now everything was clear: these were cockroaches and had to exterminate them as possible. Any person would accept this without a shadow of doubt. Whether left or right, man kills cockroaches, regardless of their status in the class struggle, the man kills, and the procedure requires no further justification, unless the partner is the cockroach itself, because it explains how each bug is a bug and therefore must die? Also What kind of argument was this?
There was no argument. Definitely your mind surfaced the same nonsense of Hitler to the Jews, the same nonsense of all genocides. In a moment of revelation, Balvanera realized that he was acting like the evil of his own movie. But the worst of it was that he could not help, because as soon as I imagined a scene of domestic partnership with a host of happy and liberated cockroaches running around the table wren and opened the fridge to pour himself a yogurt, he bristled the hairs on the neck and the heart is accelerated. "Hitler would suffer the same symptoms at the approach of German Jews? Could I blame him for that? Congenital Would this form of evil? But what kind of thoughts are these? Hitler was a genocidal, the supreme symbol of oppression and slaughter. Should be repudiated because it represented the death, the cruel killing without reason. Of course, as he posed for his cockroaches.
went around in circles until they got tired. Discontinued without notice and without solving the puzzle, which by contrast, was far larger.
the message but never responded stoically endured the rare occurrences of less than a cockroach in a while their little antennas sticking out curious in light of electric lamps. "It's to learn a little," they said, and bore the brunt invariable symptoms of disgust and horror.
But something profound had happened. The last episode had stripped to himself. The pillars of all his intellectual scaffolding were cracked and there was no way to repair, much less time to build new ones. All his teaching, patient and painstakingly built over years of continuous improvement now shaking like a leaf in the wind, and as trying to shore, the mere imagination of a cockroach walking free in his hand he brought it back with the crack enlarged and the hairs on your neck on a war footing.
gradually began to decline invitations to their revolutionary speeches. At the University, classes of human rights were cooling down and becoming a mere repetition of laws written down in books.
At home, the cockroach was still gaining ground now been solved by this craven attitude revealed by Balvanera and effectively detected by the insect, which went into a war of small acts of violation of the deal were never serious enough to motivate a written protest.
One morning, a large cockroach appeared on the bathroom floor. Reflecting nearly forgotten, the stepped Balvanera decisively. He felt a strange hardness under the sole of the shoe, but when he came to inspect the body, three cockroaches appeared on the scene and took the body.
The next morning was the answer in a pile of leaves on the kitchen table.
"Federica was a restless youth. Questioned everything our agreement. Accused us of being traitors to the species. He preached to the younger generation's need to fight for freedom, of all possible ways. It was a true revolutionary and eloquence was supported by action in a suicidal act last night. Now she is dead and is venerated as a martyr to a cause that has suddenly and is gaining widespread throughout the colony. The situation has become complicated Balvanera. We do not know how long we can maintain control. "
Balvanera felt a chill in the back and a sense of panic. Would have to live the next few days knowing that in all the cracks of your kitchen a revolution was brewing. Would you go out from under the refrigerator or attack from the bathroom? Do you tend an ambush? Would ride "in his pants to besiege his genitals or be thrown from the roof and would land on his baldness to move then to the face, ears and eyes? How urdiría colonial revenge for the murder of Federica? It was difficult to live with that film projects will continue, to live well, with an imminent danger in the kitchen and perhaps in the entire house.
followed days of tense silence and revenge whose details are emerging fast in the imagination of Balvanera, which now loomed attacking sleeping, getting into his mouth and stuck in the past snoring before the madness.
But time passed and the cockroaches showed no signs of life. The profusion of horrific images ceased almost completely and the passage of days was transformed into a slight panic sensation of insecurity that only increased a little in the kitchen. Finally
Balvanera came home one night, entered, closed the door, turned on the light, turned and uttered a cry of horror. Scattered like leaves of autumn at its peak, hundreds of cockroaches swarmed around the house, walked over the couch and on the dinner table and out through the ventilation slots on the TV, walked the roof and walls and transformed tiling a plain vibrant. Revenge had been consummated, in full revolution had left the cockroach vice of freedom, escaping from his cell to surface as a dark and Cement sweat dripping down the walls and dripped from the ceiling.
Panic gave way to an instinctive and irrational aggression injected a dying heroically in the blood of Balvanera. Mad as a bulldozer moved stepping cockroaches and hammering with his fist without even notice the strange and hard texture of bodies. The colony began a withdrawal Dantesque and equips the kitchen below. Balvanera literally started the engine, threw it far away and dove into the hole in blind pursuit, leaving a gas vent in the nipple was emerging from the wall. The roaches moved gaining the floor left the counter, taking refuge in absolute darkness. Devoid of all reasoning, the lighter Balvanera sought to illuminate the den. He knelt in the hollow of the kitchen as a Muslim prostrate before their god, holding the lighter and threw the spark.
The blast shook the neighborhood and broke several windows of surrounding houses. Ernesto entered the race from the home of Matthias and into the ruins of her home crying bitterly blaming.
The ambulance took Balvanera, dumped him in the halls of a nearby hospital and left. With a flashlight, emergency medical lit up the eyes open and missed the Doctor Balvanera lying motionless on the stretcher. The diagnosis was unclear. In addition to multiple bruises and burns, the man was in a state of shock, perhaps accompanied by lesions of brain tissue that time had left the patient in a state of absolute isolation that could last a few days, years or all life.
The following days interspersed piled into a routine of coming and going in her wheelchair pulled by the nurse on duty, his head tilted to the left, looking lost and the mind lost in a limbo unknown. No talking, no gesturing, no walking, and barely opened her mouth under the pressure of the spoon on the lips. So passed the days and months of straight time, matched to nothing.
But several years later, slowly, very slowly, Balvanera began to listen and respond with a groan that heralded the return of language emerging.
Ofelia, Ernesto and his new wife, Marianela, arrived from Cordoba to attend the miracle.
Ernesto had been straightened through the good offices of the aunt. Systems was studied, worked at a home computer inputs and expected a daughter Marianela already kicked from the nest placenta.
went down the long hallway of neuropsychiatric, entered the recreation room and there they left the doctor and internalized by the unexpected onset of symptoms.
"Hi Dad," said Ernesto. Look, I brought Marianela, the girl I told you about. And soon you'll have a granddaughter.
The man shook his head as if it weighed a ton. He looked at the pregnant girl, raised eyebrows, mouth wide open and gave an unintelligible sound. Ernesto knelt beside him and put his ear. The man repeated, now more clear-Ponele
Federica.
The boy broke into a sob that quickly became tears. And cried and cried in the lap of his father semi dormant.
Further back, Ofelia asked Marianela, who repeated the phrase with a tone of viewing. She nodded gravely, without understanding a word of what was happening.
A little while back, some patients walking aimlessly, others talked to the cries and still others were watching a huge TV blaring and transmitting the advertising shoot a children's program. Selling a huge doll's face alone was seventeen movements, then a transformer in its mode of spacecraft, flying certainly, then, to scare the old, the third version of an army of cockroaches igualitas the truth, that be controlled remotely from a nearby PC and supported a number of skills that could downloaded from the Internet.
Outside, the gardener mowed the lawn extolling the scent of crushed grass. Above, the sky, embracing all the stories in the world with that absolute discretion is like a God's forgiveness.
